I get increasingly annoyed by the various indirect taxes in Norway, such as the fees for state services.
Re-regisitering a car is one of them, the fee to the state for purchasing a new appartment is another. The latter fee is about 2 percent of the price. Call me crazy, but I don't think the amount of work increases linearly with the price of the apartment or house.
One of the state's largest income sources is the Value Added Tax (VAT), which is 25 percent for generic items, 11 percent for certain groceries, and a whole bunch of other numbers for various transactions, such as 8 percent for the broadcasting license
When I purchased my car the re-registration fee was about 1300 USD. The cost estimates for the same task is about 50 USD.
After intensified media attention on the subject, the government might get more openness around these fees. The Secretary of Finance and myself probably have different reasons to react, however. Her reasoning is that it is unjustified because it is paid by the common man and not "the rich", a classification she place somewhere between one third and half of the Norwegian population in.
In my opinion these services should be priced at self-cost and not serve as yet another indirect tax.
